Monday, August 27, 2007

A Beary Good Time

When her royal Highness, er, Catherine asked me to blogsit for her today, it was all I could do to trip over myself and take her up on her offer before she realized the error of her ways and rescinded the invitation. After all, this is the HBM. I'm just a trashy redneck. This isn't an opportunity that is going to roll around every damn day.

I'm taking the keys she dangled before me and rolling around nekkid in her carpets. Gotta mark my territory you know. It's my only chance. I'll refrain from rifling through her panty drawer though. I'm going to try and conduct myself with a little bit of decorum around here. Class myself up a bit and hope it takes.

But I couldn't resist from temptation completely. I had to take a quick peak into her closets. After getting an eyeful of all the different costumes dangling in there, I quickly realized I was out of my league and tried to wipe the image of Catherine in a nun's habit with a whip and stilettos from my mind.

Life is too short to be carrying that image around all damn day.

My life span was already significantly shortened this past weekend when I had my husband's entire clan camp out on my doorstep for two days. I'm still recovering.

Oh sure, they are nice enough people. Clever, kind and they always bring truck loads of liquor with them. (They are thoughtful guests.) But while they are bending their elbows and pouring their next cocktails, I'm running with around like a chicken with it's head cut off trying to keep the oodles of kiddies they brought with them from falling into a dugout or a fire pit.

Four feet wide and three feet deep. It seemed like a good idea BEFORE we had kids. Now it's just a heart attack waiting to happen.

My sister-in-law is none too thrilled that her youngest child has no eyelashes or brows after they were singed off by the heat of the mostrous inferno my husband created. While she and I and a few others were discussing the merits of white wine vs. red, her husband and mine were to be watching the kiddies to make sure no one fell into the fiery pit of flames.

I guess we should have specified to make sure the the kids weren't standing close enough to have their faces melted off. Stupid me.

Boo and his brother figure the kid didn't need eyelashes any ways. He was starting to look too pretty with them. They fixed that for him.

Sigh.

Then there was the lovely moment when my niece came tearing out from the bush screaming like some pedophile with a sharp knife was chasing her. As I was gnawing on my corn, she happened to stumble upon a wasp's nest. Luckily for her, she was only stung twice. But as she raced up the steps I noticed her pants were covered with wasps trying to burrow in. She had three in her crotch area alone. I called for Boo while trying to convince her to quickly take off her pants without drawing attention that her lady parts would soon be under attack if she didn't get those pants. off. right. now.

The nest that was right under our deck, beneath the front door. We never thought to check the bushes for ground nests. Dumb asses.

I shouldn't have mentioned her pants. I should have just whipped them right off of her. As soon as I mentioned her pants she looked down, saw the swarm of wasps covering her legs and freaked right the fuck out.

Good times.

And my dog snitched my corncob while I was dealing with the crisis. Bastard.

Later in the evening, when just about everyone had been maimed by a small stinging demon sent from hell, we started to set up the tent for the kiddies. All of a sudden, Nixon, the World's Greatest Dog, Ever. and the neighbour's Rottweiler started to freak out. I looked down and noticed both dogs' hair was standing on end. Like cats on crack.

Suddenly, this mosied on out of the bush:

HOLY MOTHER OF GAWD...Get the kids!!! NOW!!!

It's one thing to joke about the kids being bear bait; it's quite another to dangle their plump little bodies in front the gaping snouts of hungry beasts.

Turns out the pair were just moving through, on their way to greener pastures, so to speak. But suddenly this meant there would be no tent setting up, no kids sleeping out under the great night sky, and no room to move in my already full house. I had bodies every where, even one sleeping in the bath tub.

I fucking love entertaining.

Oh, it wasn't all bad. The booze was good. We bonded with all the children. We gossiped with the adults and told inappropriate jokes while looking furtively around for any little ears that may be around.

We played a family friendly game of Red Rover, where we took out all of our parental frustrations out on the kiddies. We adults may have got carried away. As demonstrated when my daughter was called over and she chose to try and break through between her daddy and her uncle.

Being the grown, mature men they are, they clothes-lined the poor girl, catching her right under her chin and sending her flying. They somehow managed to catch some of her hair in the process and while my daughter lay gasping for air on the ground, one could see wisps of her long, blonde hair floating through the air.

Thank God the adoption peoples weren't around to witness that.

Ahem.

In the end, we had six kids with wasp bites, one with a bruised windpipe, one slightly singed child, one partly concussed from when she fell down after walking around the slippery edge of the pool and banged her head, eight kids suffering from slight hypothermia from swimming in water 10 degrees Celsius (50 degrees for you Yanks) because I had forgotten to turn on the pool heater before hand, one with gravel burns on his hands and knees from a fairly spectacular wipe out on my drive way after demonstrating how NOT to do a wheelie on a bike, all twelve kids psychologically traumatized from thinking they were about to be eaten alive when the bears arrived and one poor child who got a fairly deep sliver only to have a tipsy uncle wield a sewing needle and try and dig it out. I can still hear the poor kid's scream for mercy while the uncle told him to suck it up and quit moving.

Phenomenal weekend story! But where in bee-jeezers name do you live that you have a couple of black bears just passing through?! I guess the city girl in me comes out because I've only seen them at the zoo.

Your first mistake was ever acting competent in the first place. To this day, my mother in law brings a complete dinner for everyone whenever she comes to my house. Family members know they're welcome, but they also realize they're better off fending for themselves when they get here. Friends are a different story. We throw notoriously good parties because I quickly get too drunk to care who sets what on fire or to object when someone creates a riding-lawnmower race track around the perimeter. However, most of those guests wouldn't have much faith in me when it comes to performing good hostess duties like swatting wasps off their privates. And in case you're wondering, we don't allow kids at these parties :)

*about dies laughing* You do realize, after Boo's comment about my family reunion looking like one of yours that the bees you had were really hilarious to me. Sorry.. but so good to know I'm not the only one with that nightmare memory of the winged terrors.. although we had nothing so exciting as bears... unless you count hairy men... we had alot of those.

Dude.. Ug and I are needing a vacation... and Ug's an expert wasp/bee killer...